Cataract is one of the most common eye disorders that causes vision distortion. Accurate and timely detection of cataracts is the best way to control the risk and avoid blindness. Recently, artificial intelligence-based cataract detection systems have been received research attention. In this paper, a novel deep neural network, namely CataractNet , is proposed for automatic cataract detection in fundus images. The loss and activation functions are tuned to train the network with small kernels, fewer training parameters, and layers. Thus, the computational cost and average running time of CataractNet are significantly reduced compared to other pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models. The proposed network is optimized with the Adam optimizer. A total of 1130 cataract and non-cataract fundus images are collected and augmented to 4746 images to train the model. For avoiding the over-fitting problem, the dataset is extended through augmentation before model training. Experimental results prove that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art cataract detection approaches with an average accuracy of 99.13%.

Acne scarring occurs in 95% of people with acne vulgaris due to collagen loss or gains when the body is healing the damages of the skin caused by acne inflammation. Accurate classification of acne scars is a vital factor in providing a timely, effective treatment protocol. Dermatologists mainly recognize the type of acne scars manually based on visual inspections, which are time- and energy-consuming and subject to intra- and inter-reader variability. In this paper, a novel automated acne scar classification system is proposed based on a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model. First, a dataset of 250 images from five different classes is collected and labeled by four well-experienced dermatologists. The pre-processed input images are fed into our proposed model, namely ScarNet , for deep feature map extraction. The optimizer, loss function, activation functions, filter and kernel sizes, regularization methods, and the batch size of the proposed architecture are tuned so that the classification performance is maximized while minimizing the computational cost. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method with accuracy, specificity, and kappa score of 92.53%, 95.38%, and 76.7%, respectively.

Healthcare systems worldwide are burdened by mosquitoes transmitting dangerous diseases. Conventional mosquito surveillance methods to alleviate these diseases are based on expert entomologists’ manual examination of the morphological characteristics, which is time-consuming and unscalable. The lack of professional experts brings a high necessity for cheap and accurate automated alternatives for mosquito classification. This paper proposes an end-to-end deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for mosquito species classification by taking advantage of both dropout layers and transfer learning to enhance performance accuracy. Dropout layers randomly disable the neurons of the neural network, mitigating co-adaptation and data overfitting. Transfer learning efficiently applies the extracted features from one dataset to others. Furthermore, a Region of Interest (ROI) visualization component is adopted to gain insight into the model learning. The generalization ability and feasibility of the proposed model are validated on four publicly available mosquito datasets. Experimental results on these datasets with an accuracy of 98.82%, 98.92%, 94.66%, and 98.40% demonstrate the superiority of our proposed system over the recent state-of-the-art approaches. The effectiveness of different numbers of dropout layers, their positions in the network, and their values are all investigated through ablation studies. Visualizing the model attention confirms that useful mosquito features are learned from insect legs and thorax through our model leading to optimistic predictions.

Visual field loss (VFL) is a persistent visual impairment characterized by blind spots (scotoma) within the normal visual field, significantly impacting daily activities for affected individuals. CurrentVirtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)-based visual aids suffer from low video quality, content loss, high levels of contradiction, and limited mobility assessment. To address these issues, we propose an innovative vision aid utilizing AR headset and integrating advanced video processing techniques to elevate the visual perception of individuals with moderate to severe VFL to levels comparable to those with unimpaired vision. Our approach introduces a pioneering optimal video remapping function tailored to the characteristics of AR glasses. This function strategically maps the content of live video captures to the largest intact region of the visual field map, preserving quality while minimizing blurriness and content distortion. To evaluate the performance of our proposed method, a comprehensive empirical user study is conducted including object counting and multi-tasking walking track tests and involving 15 subjects with artificially induced scotomas in their normal visual fields. The proposed vision aid achieves 41.56% enhancement (from 57.31% to 98.87%) in the mean value of the average object recognition rates for all subjects in object counting test. In walking track test, the average mean scores for obstacle avoidance, detected signs, recognized signs, and grasped objects are significantly enhanced after applying the remapping function, with improvements of 7.56% (91.10% to 98.66%), 51.81% (44.85% to 96.66%), 49.31% (43.18% to 92.49%), and 77.77% (13.33% to 91.10%), respectively. Statistical analysis of data before and after applying the remapping function demonstrates the promising performance of our method in enhancing visual awareness and mobility for individuals with VFL.